Engendering Wealth And Well-being

Engendering Wealth And Well-being
Author: Rae Lesser Blumberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2018-02-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 042996935X

The new international division of labor and the imposition of structural adjustment on Third World countries has necessitated a reexamination of development policies and a reevaluation of the role of gender in their success or failure. Although women often bear the heaviest burden under structural adjustment, there is also considerable evidence of women being empowered through their responses to the challenges of economic restructuring. Based on case study material from Eastern Europe, the Islamic nations, Africa, China, and Latin America, this volume explores the significant contributions women make to the wealth and well-being of their families and nations. The contributors argue persuasively that women may hold the key to sustainable development, an increasingly critical issue at a time when policymakers are reconsidering the full costs and benefits of a growth-fixated development model. One of the first to embody the new “gender and development” paradigm, this book reports on research at the frontiers of knowledge and theory about the gendered outcomes of economic transformation, restructuring, and social change. By incorporating “voices from the South,” it makes a provocative addition to our understanding of the political economy of development and of the relationship between world ecology and the world economy.

The Promised Land?

The Promised Land?
Author: Patricia L. Goerman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135516790

Through analysis of in-depth interviews with seventy-three Hispanic immigrants in Central Virginia, this book offers a rare in-depth look at the views and circumstances of immigrants in a new receiving area. It provides an examination of the new migration trend including an analysis of immigrants' living and working conditions, their family life, and their plans for the future.

Land Tenure, Gender and Globalisation

Land Tenure, Gender and Globalisation
Author: Dzodzi Tsikata
Publisher: IDRC
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 8189884727

Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Vietnam, and the Amazon forests of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of people's responses to it. A central theme is the people's resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods. For instance, in the Amazon, the focus is on the social movements that have emerged in the context of struggles over land rights concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and babacu kernels in an increasingly globalised market. In Vietnam, the process of 'de-collectivising' rights to land is examined with a view to understand how gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy. The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalisation, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations amongst them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land and globalization.

Dancing with the River

Dancing with the River
Author: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-06-25
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0300189575

With this book Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta offer an intimate glimpse into the microcosmic world of “hybrid landscapes.” Focusing on chars—the part-land, part-water, low-lying sandy masses that exist within the riverbeds in the floodplains of lower Bengal—the authors show how, both as real-life examples and as metaphors, chars straddle the conventional categories of land and water, and how people who live on them fluctuate between legitimacy and illegitimacy. The result, a study of human habitation in the nebulous space between land and water, charts a new way of thinking about land, people, and people's ways of life.

Transforming Capitalism and Patriarchy

Transforming Capitalism and Patriarchy
Author: April A. Gordon
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 234
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781555876296

Gordon analyzes the interplay between capitalism, development and the status of African women. Drawing on the work of both African and Western researchers, she shows that capitalist development projects have mainly benefited a small stratum of African elites and proposes concrete strategies for making it more equitable for women.

Women in Transition

Women in Transition
Author: Ingrid Sandole-Staroste
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2002-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0313012156

As the transition from state socialism to capitalism takes place in various parts of the world, the everyday experiences of those individuals who are primarily affected by the drastic changes are often overlooked. Here, the authentic voices of 52 East German women who lived under state socialism and under the current reunified capitalist system are presented and examined in an effort to underscore the complexity of the transition on the most personal level. East German women, the author asserts, have had to shift their identities, expectations, and actions from accommodating one type of patriarchy to another, experiencing less gender equality in their everyday lives under capitalism than under state socialism. The author concludes that the women of East Germany, and possibly other post-communist states in general, are worse off, having regressed to fit into a more primitive form of patriarchy. At the end of the Cold War, East German women's private lives and emotional capacities took on vital public significance, as ruling elites expected women to make significant contributions to the political and economic stability of the reunited country. To accomplish this stability, the social roles and spaces of East German women had to be redefined to fit into the West German model. Through the voices of these women, the author shows that they fared better in some respects under the old socialist system and that they were now subjected to new, and much more traditional, gender roles even as they were expected to work and advance within the more patriarchal system. By presenting and analyzing the thoughts and perceptions of these women, the author illustrates how they have resisted, to various degrees, complying with the demands made by the newly established institutions, which require them to relinquish the crucial part of their identity that was shaped by socialist norms and values.

Gender, Literacy, and Life Chances in Sub-Saharan Africa

Gender, Literacy, and Life Chances in Sub-Saharan Africa
Author: Benedicta Egbo
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781853594649

Taking as a starting point the taken-for-granted assumption that literacy affects women's lives in very important ways, the author provides much needed evidence from research in a rural community in Sub-Saharan Africa, that show the value of literacy in increasing the life chances of women. The book concludes with macro and micro level policy options that are necessary for critical (re)construction of women's lives in the region and elsewhere.

Still Fighting

Still Fighting
Author: Katherine Isbester
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2001-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 082297228X

The story of the women's movement in Nicaragua is a fascinating tale of resistance, strategy, and faith. From its birth in 1977 under the Somoza dictatorship through the Sandinista revolution to the fall of the Chamorro government, the Nicaraguan women's movement has navigated revolutionary upheaval, profound changes in government, and rapidly shifting definitions of women's roles in society. Through it all, the movement has surged, regressed, and persevered, entering the twenty-first century a powerful and influential force, stretching from the grassroots to the national level.How did women in an economically underdeveloped Central American country, with little history of organizing, feminism, or democracy, succeed in creating networks, organizations, and campaigns that carved out a gender identity and challenged dominant ideologies (both revolutionary and conservative)? In Still Fighting, Katherine Isbester seeks to understand. She analyzes the complex and rich case of Nicaragua in order to learn more about the dynamics of social movements in general and women's organizing in particular. Social movement theory offers Isbester an analytic tool to explain the extraordinary evolution of the Nicaraguan movement. She theorizes that a sustainable movement is composed of three elements: a focused goal, a mobilization of resources, and an identity. The lack of any one of these weakens a social movement. Isbester shows how this theory is borne out by the experience of the Nicaraguan women's movement over the past thirty years. She demonstrates, for example, how the revolutionary government of the 1980s co-opted the women's movement, crippling its ability to create an autonomous identity, choose it own goals, and mobilize resources independent of the state. Hence, it lost legitimacy, membership, and influence. She traces the movement's resurgence in the 1990s, the result of its redefinition as an autonomous movement organized around an identity of care. Still Fighting combines social theory with field research, leading a new wave of scholarship on women in Latin America. Isbester interviewed more than a hundred key participants in the women's movement, in addition to members of the National Assembly, male leaders of other social movements, and women outside the movement. In Nicaragua, she was witness to much political organizing, enabling her to reveal the organic intricacy, as well as the historical path, of a social movement. Still Fighting will be an important book for a broad range of students and professionals in the areas of social movements, social change, gender, politics, and Latin America.

Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows
Author: Patricia Fernández-Kelly
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271045590

Since the beginning of scholarly writing about the informal economy in the mid-1970s, the debate has evolved from addressing survival strategies of the poor to considering the implications for national development and the global economy. Simultaneously, research on informal politics has ranged from neighborhood clientelism to contentious social movements basing their claims on a variety of social identities in their quest for social justice. Despite related empirical and theoretical concerns, these research traditions have seldom engaged in dialogue with one another. Out of the Shadows brings leading scholars of the informal economy and informal politics together to address how globalization has influenced local efforts to resolve political and economic needs&—and how these seemingly separate issues are indeed deeply related. In addition to the editors, contributors are Javier Auyero, Miguel Angel Centeno, Sylvia Chant, Robert Gay, Mercedes Gonz&ález de la Rocha, Jos&é Itzigsohn, Alejandro Portes, and Juan Manuel Ram&írez S&áiz.